The door slams open against a wall and a person the dog has never met walks directly towards them whilst maintaining eye contact and attempts to touch them using a fake assessor hand.
The dog backs away but the person keeps coming forward, no speaking, no friendly gestures, cold and methodical, the canine equivalent of an episode of Silent Witness. The dog looks back at its closest thing to a safe attachment figure, who has known the dog for less than a week, but no help or reassurance is offered, the dog feels very much alone and threatened, and will act accordingly.
The dog is highly likely to show aggression if it is at all nervous in disposition, and if it is not a particularly nervous dog before the test this bad experience will not help maintain that precious confidence, and may dent it. Remember that with trigger stacking in rescue, a dogs personality can very much turn from Jekyll into Hyde very swiftly, albeit usually temporarily.
So what is the ideal outcome of this test? I assume it is for the dog to not show aggression and to ignore all of its responses to ensure its own survival and instead behave like a friendly bashful puppy; to offer the stranger an undeserved olive branch.
If you want to get a visual of how a dog will behave when faced with what is potentially an extreme threat then this test will most likely fulfil that wish. As if it couldn’t get any worse, for some rescues the outcome of this test alone will determine the fate of the dog; it is rehomed or euthanized. In one centre I saw an odd addition of the stranger wearing a Hi-Vis jacket…lets not even go there.
Why can we not slowly gauge the dogs reactions to people, starting with their behaviour towards the staff that are their main care givers on a day to day basis, then moving on to them getting the chance to meet new staff in a relaxed way. A good assessor can get a good sense of the dogs behaviour towards new people by watching their body language when they see strangers on a walk, and pass at a slight distance. If a dog is nervous of people on walks, especially if they show aggression, then they are usually going to be worse with visitors in their home environment.
For dogs that are fearful of new people, plans should be put into place immediately to gently introduce the dog to a visitor procedure using real life rooms whilst at the rescue. Counter conditioning can be focused on to help the dog view new people as a less threatening occurrence, and an emphasis on teaching focus work onto the handler will help start a new owner off with good management skills.
In a previous blog I touched on dog-dog assessments, and the outcomes of those often meaning yay or nay for rehoming – of course as with all things it depends on how they are carried out, their are some centres that assess dogs to a very high standard, but still too many for my liking that don’t; but that’s for another blog.
Food tests are also a puzzle to me, which often involve someone touching the dog while it is eating or putting a fake assessor hand into the food bowl. For me however, if you are able to read body language, even at a low level, you will be able to tell if a dog has a guarding issue, or the potential to develop one, without going up the dog when it’s eating. It is also the case that dogs will sometimes guard in rescue that have never guarded in a home, this can be due to fear, stress and lack of trust in this new environment, the dog feels unsafe and has no knowledge of when its next meal will come or if it will come at all. Some dogs can feel this way for quite a while. It is fascinating at the amount of rescue staff that are ‘dreading doing that dogs food test’…..because they have clearly already identified food aggression in the dog, so why are we doing further testing?
When I’ve brought this up before with different groups of people, the counter attack has been “but we need to know if the dog will bite”, my reply is that the early signals tell us all we need to know. Trust the dog because they don’t lie.
Sweeping statements in an assessment can inadvertently unfairly label a dog, as with so much in life things may not always be as they seem and we should be cautious about taking too much at face value without further analysis. If a dog for example is afraid of an object such as a broom that it sees in a kennel block, or a loud noise, it does not necessarily mean that the dog is a nervous dog, or has a noise phobia. In this situation it may simply be that the broom happened to make the dog jump in that exact moment, but in a home environment would not have caused the same reaction as things are stable and predictable. It’s worth remembering that when we are stressed or anxious our tolerance levels are far lower and we tend to spook easily. I don’t have a fear of loud noises, thank goodness as rescues can be pretty noisy places at times, but if I’m in a hyper vigilant state after foolishly watching one too many horror films before my night shift, I’ll be guaranteed to jump at even the slightest noise that would on a usual shift not even gain my attention.
Documenting things is vital when assessing in rescue, it helps keep track of the dogs behaviour, stress levels and any issues developing, whether kennel behaviours or not, that need extra training or in some cases a behaviour modification plan put into place. It’s also vital for staff safety. If the dog has shown signs of re-directed aggression the day before, which was more than the days previous to that, then chances are very soon the dog is going to hurt someone, by keeping careful notes staff incidents can be avoided.
If a dog is kennel stressed, undesirable breeds traits will begin to come out that are not being channelled in the dogs current limited and lacking situation, for example herding breeds may begin lunging at traffic or other dogs because they have nothing else to herd and are frustrated as a result. Breeds that have a predisposition to being suspicious of new people may begin showing aggression to strangers when in a home this was never the case. Take the intake information from the owner with a pinch of salt but don’t dismiss it – a dog may have been fantastic with dogs when on walks with previous owners, but is snappy and reactive at the rescue. Remember that stray dogs have no known history, they may have ran off on a walk or escaped their garden, or they may have been made a stray due to a significant behavioural problem, therefore be careful always about deciding if a dog goes home with children or not.
Assessing dogs should be done gently, with great sensitivity to the needs of the dog, and with real empathy for the trama they are going through, rescue kennels are simply that, traumatic, in so many ways for a social being that needs stability and safe attachment figures to function to the best of its ability.
An assessment is not an audition and shouldn’t be treated as such, we are not on X factor, be realistic and honest, question everything, be objective, and understand that some dogs will prove to be a huge risk despite best efforts to minimise stress and set the dog up for success. At the back of our minds however should always be that this is life, it is important, and giving a dog the best chance at a future should always be the main objective.
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” Albert Einstein
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